The Minnesota Wild’s first season was 2000-01, a quarter-century ago. They have shared 24 seasons, counting this one and accounting for the lockout-erased 2004-05 NHL campaign, with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
For the first two decades of that overlap — 20 years of Wild hockey and Wolves basketball — the two franchises made the playoffs in the same season exactly twice: 2002-03 and 2017-18.
The blame isn’t exactly 50-50 (the Wolves only had five postseason appearances in that span while the Wild had 11), but there is enough in both directions to acknowledge this: For a long time, the Twin Cities had a mediocre-at-best winter sports scene (at least when it came to what are considered the two major men’s leagues that play the bulk of their schedule in the coldest months).
But that means we also have to acknowledge this: After 20 mostly dreadful shared seasons, Minnesota can now boast of a proper winter pro sports market.
This year marks the third in the last four that both the Wild and the Wolves have made the playoffs. Both took things down to their final regular-season games (the final 22 seconds, in the Wild’s case) before guaranteeing themselves a playoff spot, but they are both in.
I talked about each team on Wednesday’s “Daily Delivery” podcast.
While this recent ascent into competence shouldn’t be confused with dominance given that neither team has ever won a championship ... or played for a championship ... and each has won exactly four playoff series in their existence ... we can still appreciate the relative improvement.
We also must discuss what it means: April and potentially May can get crazy when two teams are trying to make playoff runs.
